To hear Gov. Chris Christie talk, he’s working magic on jobs. But flip on the radio in any other state and you’ll hear the same thing: Governors always exaggerate their own powers to levitate the economy.

Sure, he’s taken some constructive steps and we’ve seen a degree of improvement. Yet overall, during his time in office, New Jersey has been in poor shape relative to the nation, and nearby states like New York and Pennsylvania. We’ve limped behind in overall job creation. Our recovery has been much more sluggish; our unemployment rate significantly higher.

So when Christie presents himself as the guy who’s turning around the state’s job market, it’s mostly bunk. Claiming that he deserves kudos for the roughly 60,000 private sector jobs added since his first full month in office is a political stage performance.

Former governors admit there’s actually very little they could have done over four years to improve the job market. It’s unrealistic of voters to expect that kind of wand-waving. Under any governor, Democrat or Republican, New Jersey’s economy has always tended to track the national trends.

At the same time, Christie does deserve some credit. He got a grip on New Jersey’s ballooning public sector workforce, which, over the past decade, had grown disproportionately while the private job market remained stagnant. That balance had to be righted.

And he’s done much to charm the business community, with Democrats on board for most of it. He cut business taxes and expanded subsidies, such as the tax breaks that restarted the stalled construction on the Revel casino in Atlantic City, and state incentives that may help transform Xanadu, the ugly frog of shopping malls, into something attractive. He’s worked to cut red tape and made CEOs feel like he’s a friendly ear.

Yet other times, he’s gone overboard. He insisted on lower taxes for the wealthy, based on a bogus claim that higher taxes drove them out of the state. He went too far in loosening environmental protections, with an excessively broad waiver rule that only takes advantage of the desperation for jobs to work an anti-environment agenda that was in place long before. And we have no actual evidence that either of those measures has helped job growth in our state.

So ultimately, Christie’s record on jobs is mixed: New Jersey has made modest progress, but there has been no turnaround as the governor suggests. Proclaiming anything different would be pure illusion.